Tag Archives: Facebook

I recently wrote a guest post at New Media Angels about the future of Facebook. It was sparked by a discussion as to whether Facebook was doomed and what it ought to do to avoid such a fate. I outlined a few steps that I thought would preserve Facebook’s future and one of them was allowing you to buy things via your Facebook account. Since then people have asked a few questions, but the number one question has been this: “why on Earth do you think I’d give Facebook my credit card?”

It’s a fair question, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to respond.

My thinking behind the Facecoin idea was simple. Right now Facebook has one revenue stream: ads. That’s not enough to ensure survival in my book. So they need to diversify. Get a few fingers in a few pies. And micropayments is an emerging pie. The only real contender is Bitcoin. Bitcoin, however, is not a well-known name. Facebook is. And if you’re faced with a name you know and a name you don’t, a lot of people will pick the former without even asking about the latter.

But, of course, Facebook isn’t a name you can trust. That’s why step one of my plan was to rebuild trust. I’m not convinced their reputation is irreparably damaged. And once they’ve changed their image, I think people wouldn’t balk at handing over their details. Especially younger users, who might not have been online when Facebook was so distrusted. After all, we trust PayPal with our credit card. Why not someone else?

Let me put it this way: imagine a new social network, Safebook is unveiled tomorrow. Safebook does everything Facebook does, down to the finest detail. But it makes no claims to your photos or data. It makes it easy to manage your privacy. In fact, it encourages privacy. Privacy might even be a default. And Safebook also lets you pay for things, just like PayPal. Why wouldn’t you dump Facebook?

Now imagine if Facebook turned into Safebook over the next year. Now tell me you wouldn’t hand over your card details.

Amazon’s review system is broken and open to abuse. Certain writers were posting damning reviews on competitors’ books and glowing reviews on their own. Others were paying strangers to leave reviews. And readers were swarming good books with bad reviews because they didn’t like what it had to say and wanted it to fail. It’s all bad voodoo and something needs to change. So Amazon decreed that no writer is permitted to review books in their own genre. But that punishes every writer for the sins of the few. And it doesn’t stop the swarming problem. So what are they to do?

Easy. Make Amazon more like Facebook.

Sounds strange? Not at all. There’s three good reasons for my cockamamie scheme.

1. Transparency

A major problem with Amazon reviews right now is the anonymity; anyone can create multiple accounts and hide behind a username. Obi1 can swarm a book and drag down its star rating. lukes88 can post fake reviews of his book. But Facebook demands your real name. And a picture. There’s nothing to hide behind.

2. Conversation

Furthermore such a system wouldn’t even require formal reviews. Each product page could collate conversations about the product. So sending a public message to a friend suggesting they check out a book pops up as a “review”. And though these people are strangers, a shopper can see someone making the effort to recommend the book. That’s a strong review in and of itself!

3. Judge and ye be judged too

Doing all of this will also mean that when I review a book you’re better equipped to judge me as well as my review. After all you can see my activity. You can see I’m a writer, for instance. You can also see that I have a hardcore devotion to Michael Jackson. And look, I’ve liked a page called “Vote down this Michael Jackson book”. My review probably isn’t legit…

If this all sounds like an extreme solution to the problem, it shouldn’t be. If readers can’t trust the reviews on Amazon then Amazon itself becomes viewed as unreliable as the reviews it allows to remain on its site. And the same applies to others; Goodreads, for instance, has suffered from swarming as well.

Trustworthy reviews are vital to any online book seller. Removing the anonymity and adding a social element can go a long way towards restoring them. And then I can review books again.

Would you like to see Amazon become more like Facebook? Or would you avoid that like a big, corporate plague? Please let me know; I’m interested to hear what people think!

So it turns out even Randi Zuckerberg, sister to the more famous Mark and former Facebook employee, doesn’t understand Facebook privacy settings either. She thought she’d shared a photo with her nearest and dearest, but it turned out that complete strangers could see it too. (Click the link to read Gizmodo’s sympathetic take on the incident.) There’s a huge debate here as to whether Facebook is making their privacy settings too complicated or whether we just lack “human decency” as Randi would have you believe. But whilst that’s going on, here’s five things to take away from Randi’s mistake:

1. You Are The Product

Social media businesses are just that: businesses. They need to make money. Letting you share photos, videos or status updates doesn’t pay the bills. All that sharing is a carrot to get you in their door; once you’re there, they’re going to sell to you or sell you to others.

2. You’re Also The Carrot

The key to success of a social media business is a large user base. They want as many people using their service as possible. If you’re part of a social network, you work as an advert to all of your friends and colleagues, who then advertise it to people they know and so on.

3. Stories Keep Us Engaged

One of the problems Google+ had in the early days was that it was a ghost town. Nothing was going on. People signed up, had a look around and realised this party was dead.

Stories are what show up on your feeds. Geoff liked a photo is a story. Sandra checked in at the waffle house is a story. Any activity is a story and it’s something that is likely to keep you interested and engaging and clicking those like buttons. Because the more buttons you click that more data Facebook has about you that it can sell.

4. Privacy is Anathema to Social Media

Privacy settings allow you to stop yourself being a carrot and a storyteller. You can restrict certain posts to certain people, or even hide your profile altogether so that no-one can find you. But that means you’re not pulling your weight. You’re not bringing in new product and you’re not keeping it in the warehouse with your posts.

Privacy is death to a social network.

So when Facebook makes its privacy settings opaque, it’s trying to stay alive. It’s trying to keep the product productive. So it keeps the default settings to public. To keep a thing private, you have to check a dozen boxes. Which is where Randi Zuckerberg went wrong: she missed a box and allowed Facebook to create a story even though she didn’t want it to.

5. There’s No Privacy Online

Randi Zuckerberg went wrong by thinking she could put something on Facebook and keep it private. The Internet is not a small room of your nearest and dearest. It’s a huge Roman amphitheatre where the smallest whisper can be heard from every seat and the whole world has tickets. Say a word and, if it’s interesting enough, it’s spread like wildfire.

The only secret to social media is to treat it like that amphitheatre. Want to show someone an embarrassing photo? Don’t do it in the amphitheatre. Email it or use a private cloud storage facility. Any service, in fact, other than social media.

Because chances are the photo you don’t want them to see is exactly the sort of photo that they’ll love to share with everyone. And social media businesses will do anything and everything to let them do that.

Facebook Page owners are getting uptight because Facebook want to charge them to reach more of their fans. Kristen Lamb has written a good blog about it, which you should read if you haven’t already. In essence a lot of Page owners are missing the point. Too many of them view social media as a broadcast channel instead of an engagement avenue.

Billboard Networking

The number of likes a Page has is often taken as an indicator of success. But this is a fallacy. As an example, I recently saw a Page with triple-digit likes that had single digit entries into a competition. Why? It had adopted billboard networking.

Because a billboard can’t tailor itself for its audience, it needs to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible. If it can broadcast its message to thousands of people, a handful of them might notice. They play statistics and win on the 24% of people they influence. But imagine if you met someone at a party who wore a sandwich board and refused to speak to you. A large number of people would see the board. But I don’t imagine it would work too well.

Yet this is the essence of billboard networking. People approach your Page expecting to meet a person and instead they see only “Buy my book. My book’s on sale. Check out my book.” Cue a lack of engagement and that dearth of competition entries.

Social networking

Social networking is the complete opposite of billboard networking. It’s a conversation, in which you engage people on a one-to-one or one-to-few basis. At that same party, it’s the guy who spends the evening with a handful of people who share common interests and a similar sense of humour.

That guy won’t reach as many people as the sandwich board. But he’s deeply engaged with those he does reach. He’s talking but he’s also listening, and the discussion will range from books to weather to food to whatever. In social media terms, he’s posting questions and sharing good, funny and useful content. If and when his book comes up in conversation, the people he’s talking to will pay more attention because he’s not selling them something; they’re just talking.

So stop being a billboard and start being social. Stop chasing after likes and try finding friends instead. Sure it feels good if our Page has 15,000 likes; we feel popular. But if none of those 15,000 talk to you, you’ll be the loneliest popular kid around. And the girl with 50 likes who all talk regularly will be having a pretty good party without you.